The Shroud Key (28 page)

“What are you doing?” I say, my heart skipping a beat but at the same time, my soul feeling a slow burn.

She steals my 9mm from out of its holster. Back-stepping, she points the business end of the piece at my face and smiles. Pressing herself up against Cipriani’s bulky shoulder, she exhales, and sighs.

“Chase ‘Ren Man’ Baker,” she says, as if scolding one of her freshman English 101 students. “When will you ever learn? Naturally I knew from the start that you’d worked with Andre eight years ago on the first failed dig. How could I
not
know? It’s why I chose you to locate him in the first place.”

“I kept telling him his dick would get him into big trouble one day,” the detective says in his smooth, low-toned Italian.

The two goons take their respective places beside me, one on each side.

“Hey, what’s a dick for?” I say. “You weren’t very good in the sack anyway honey.”

I see Cipriani’s face drop as Anya’s eyes go wide.

I smile.

“Oh Cip, you didn’t know? Oh, well, I’m sure your girlfriend would have gotten around to telling you the truth about our sleeping bag adventure in the desert eventually.”

“Tie him up,” the detective orders.

“Oh good,” I say. “We’re gonna play some games now.”

It’s the last thing I remember saying before the goon on my left balls his fist in my face.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

In the dream
I’m floating above a cemetery. I know it’s a cemetery because I can see the headstones, the mausoleums and the green, rolling, rural pastures from high up in the friendly skies. In fact, it’s a cemetery that I know from a long time ago. The three-hundred year old Albany Rural Cemetery. The same cemetery that I would sneak into at night back when I was kid when and I would go in search of buried treasures with my
Radio Shack
metal detector. Most people don’t know it, but old cemeteries are ripe with all sorts of artifacts from hundreds of years back. Old belt buckles, coins, even musket balls took a special place of honor on my childhood bookshelves.

Soon I begin to fall.

Not rapidly as first, but slowly, gently. The closer I come to the earth, the more a single burial plot captures my attention. It’s an ornate plot that is made up of a square granite stone. Set where a headstone should be is a cross. A massive cross, I should say, maybe twenty feet high, its cross beam no less than seven feet in diameter. The cross is fashioned in the traditional manner of the Knights Templar, with half-moon-shaped edges. A Maltese cross. Situated before the cross and directly behind the stone, is a life-sized statue of a woman. A woman veiled in flowing robes, her hands hanging down at her sides, her eyes raised to the heavens. She is not the Virgin Mary, but she is somebody else entirely. Only, I can’t exactly tell who she is. Not yet. I’m too far up in the sky to know for certain.

But then something happens.

I stall, and I feel myself begin to drop. Hard, like a rock.

I see the cross and the face of the stone woman coming at me fast, see her mouth opening up, the lids on her eyes raising up, see the blood pouring out of them and down onto her cheeks…

And then I’m awake, the bright sun now shining directly into the open window above the table, stinging my eyes.

“Good to have you back with us, Chase,” Cipriani says, having tossed a glass of tap water into my face. “I wouldn’t want you to miss this for the world.”

One of the goons has already removed the padlock from the box and is now toying with the box’s built-in lockset. He’s using an electronic tool to pick the lock. The cordless tool sounds not unlike a dentist’s drill. My head hurts. Bad. My vision is cloudy and a steady but loud pulse pounds in my brain. I take slow, short breaths. Try not to talk while I attempt to gather my wits back about me.

Then, a distinct click fills my ears, like metal breaking away from metal, as the lockset drops to the wood floor. There’s the coppery taste of blood in my mouth that I only just noticed, and my left eye is partially closed, swollen. I tongue my front teeth. One of my molars feels loose. Did the goon continue to beat me while I was out? It’s entirely possible if not probable.

“Keep your good eye on this one, Chase,” Cip says, his smile glowing brighter than the Duomo’s golden cupola on a sunny Tuscan afternoon.

He steps over to the box, shooing away the second goon with a carefree wave of his hand. I glance at Anya who has her hands cathedraled at the knuckles and pressed up against the underside of her chin. She’s on pins and needles awaiting the true contents of the box. Behind me stands the other goon. The one who punched me out. He’s teasing me by flicking my right earlobe with his sausage thick index finger. I try and shrug him off, but it only makes him do it all the more.

Cipriani approaches the box, stands before it with his back to me, blocking my view entirely. Good eye or no good eye. He uses both his hands to lift the attached lid on the strong box. Its rusted hinges squeak as he slowly lifts. When the squeaks stop, I know he’s opened the lid entirely. Most of the oxygen is sucked out of the room then. An overwhelmed Anya is crying real tears. Even the goons are transfixed, the one behind me no longer flicking my ear lobe.

The detective reaches in with his hands, pulls something out, sets it down onto the dining room table. It’s a brown, leather bag. Large enough to fit the bones of a human being, including a skull. Or a partial skull anyway. The bag is bound together with leather shoelace-like straps. Cipriani carefully unties them, proceeds to unwrap them. When he’s done, he sets the straps onto the table beside the bag. Then, inhaling a deep breath, he slowly opens the bag wide. Reaching inside with a thick, naked, trembling hand, he comes back out with something.

It’s not a bone.

It’s a piece of wood. A rounded piece of wood that might make up the seatback of an old harvest chair. He slaps the wood down onto the table, then reaches in again. He comes back out with another piece of wood, and another.

“What is this merda?” he barks, the desperation in his voice painfully evident.

“It’s not the bones,” Anya cries, lowering her hands. “After everything we went through to get them.”

He dumps the out the entire contents of the bag. It’s merely a pile of wood scraps and, just for laughs, the plastic head of a bald, baby doll. I can’t help but thinking the doll must have been made in China. Back in the 1970s. I also can’t help but smile at the sight of it all. After everything we went through, fought over, died over… the bones were never inside the Third Pyramid after all. It was all a ploy fabricated many years ago by someone, somehow, somewhere, to throw us off. To throw all of the seekers of the Jesus remains off.

My face might be so much hamburger right now, but I feel lighter than air inside.

“Man, Cip,” I say. “That really sucks.”

He turns, his big brown eyes alight like super pissed off
Chariots of fire
. He points an accusatory finger at me.

“You,” he says. “You did this. You opened the box and took out the real bones of Jesus and replaced it with this…this…junk.”

He takes a step towards me, the second goon by his side looking like Frankenstein on steroids, the goon behind me now having resumed his ear flicking. Cipriani raises up his hand, back slaps me. My head rings. My left eardrum feels like it’s just exploded.

“Where did you hide the bones, Chase?”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about, Cippi,” I mumble.

Another back hand … More ringing in my head … More ear flicking.

“Tell me where you’ve hidden the bones?” he presses.

“Take a look at the box and that old padlock on the floor. Look at that leather bag. It hasn’t been opened in thirty five years. If I had opened it, it would be obvious.”

He slaps me again. Harder.

“You made it look like the box hasn’t been opened in that time. You took the bones and made sure the box looked as if it hadn’t been tampered with. That’s what you did, but now you are going to tell me where you hid the bones of Jesus. Only I’m not going to be one to get it out of you. My associates will do the job effectively.”

Ear Flicker comes around front. Second Goon takes his place beside him. Both men reach into their leather coat pockets at the same time, pull out a pair of thin leather gloves apiece. Second goon holds up an index finger, as if to say,
Wait just a second!
He heads into the kitchen where I hear him going through some of the silver wear drawers. When he comes back out, he’s holding a paring knife and a wine opener.

“You gonna pop my cork with that?” I say.

Ear Flicker punches me in the mouth.

“We’re going to remove your eye with it,” Second Goon says in stilted, Italian-accented English.

“You only have two eyes,” Cirpriani says. “That means you only have two chances to tell us where you’ve placed the bones. I think that’s fair.”

“Oh goody,” I say. “You boys from Sicily?”

Ear Flicker picks up the paring knife, presses the sharp business end against my throat, directly below the Adams apple. He wraps a huge, leather-gloved left hand around my forehead, presses the back of my skull tight against his hard gut. Using his index finger and thumb, he forces my right eyelid open. Second Goon picks up the wine opener, aims the sharp, pointed screw at my right eyeball.

“So what will it be, Chase?” Cip says, not without a smile. “Will you tell us where the bones are hidden? Or will you lose an eye for Jesus Christ?”

He belly laughs.

Ear Flicker tightens his grip.

Second Goon comes within a half inch of my eye with the screw tip.

Anya shrieks, covers her eyes with her hands.

“Hold him very still,” Second Goon says. “I want to feel the pop of his eyeball when I pierce it.”

The screw comes closer … Closer still …

Forgive them God, for they know not what they do.

CHAPTER FIFTY

It’s all going in slow motion. The screw approaching my eye. The deep, guttural laughs emerging from two hundred pounds of back-stabbing Detective Cipriani. It’s like a video played at slower than slow speed. I pray to the good Lord, if it’s possible for the good Lord to hear me,
Please make me pass out. Pass. Out. Now!

But it doesn’t happen.

I maintain total consciousness.

At the same time, I’m trying to lift my right foot up and down in order to take advantage of an exposed nail that’s embedded into the old chair’s lower right leg. Trying to do it unnoticeably. If I lift and lower my foot, the duct tape wrapped around my ankle scrapes against the nail. I can feel it tearing just a tiny bit with each up-and-down movement.

I see the needle-like corkscrew about to enter into my eyeball. Funny what you recall during moments like these. Like when I was in high school and a friend of mine fell face forward on his ski pole during the Friday night ski club outing. It went directly into his right eye. He didn’t lose the eye but he sported quite the shiner for the next month. All the while he kept insisting that as bad as the injury looked, he felt no real pain, other than what came from the socket and the eyelids. I asked him how it was that he couldn’t feel any pain from a ski pole being rammed into his eye. He shook his head and said, “The eyeball feels no pain. Simple as that.”

As the corkscrew approaches I look forward to feeling no pain even if I am about to be half blinded.